NEIGHBOURS TRASH KNOWN DRUG HOUSE

The interior of a Whalley drug house was smashed up Sunday night by
residents fed up with the trouble it has brought to their
neighbourhood for the past year.

A soggy mound of belongings covered the front lawn of the rental house
at 9892-130th St. yesterday morning, two days after police removed the
last of a group of squatters from the place.

"Tenants have moved," reads the message scrawled in florescent orange
spray paint on a sheet of particle board nailed over the front door.
The windows are boarded up, too, except on the second floor which has
a hole smashed in the glass.

According to Surrey RCMP, the landlord evicted the tenants but nine
people remained, squatting illegally in the house. On Sunday, police
were called in to help get them out.

"When we arrived there were only two squatters left. They were
removed, along with their belongings," said Surrey RCMP Const. Tim
Shields.

"Later that night, sometime after 11 p.m., a group of male neighbours
broke in and trashed the interior of the house."

Margaret Fraser and Karen Colpitts, who both live nearby, were out for
a walk Tuesday morning. Both said they were glad to see their
unwelcome neighbours gone and wondered why it took so long to get the
place shut down.

"They were selling drugs and stealing from the neighbours," Fraser
said. "Their backyard was just disgusting; it was full of garbage. We
could hear them yelling and screaming at three and four in the morning."

Colpitts laid the blame at the landlord's feet for not properly
screening the tenants before they moved in. She said previous tenants
were also a problem.

The intrusion of drug houses into their neighbourhood worries both
women.

"We've all lived here for years; we've raised our kids in these
houses. We all keep our houses nice, but just because we live in an
older neighbourhood, we get lumped in with these people," Fraser said.
"It's terrible."

Surrey bylaw enforcement manager John Sherstone said the landlord was
co-operating with the city to remove the problem tenants and faces no
sanctions under a bylaw allowing Surrey to charge owners of drug
houses for any enforcement costs incurred and to levy fines up to $5,000.